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Freeing Grace
Second Chances
The Son-in-Law
The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone
See You in September
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Neil
It’s the rattle of coins dropping into his cup that wakes him.
That, and his friend the one-legged pigeon with his happy-bird
crooning. That, and the stream of arctic air invading his sleeping
bag. That, and the whole bench shuddering as a bus wheezes
down the High Road.
Thirty seconds ago he was comfy in his old bed, his arms
around Heather, his nose in her hair. Shampoo and laundry
powder. But there must have been a door open somewhere
because ice was seeping in. He’d have to get up and shut that
bloody thing. Anyway—dammit—he needed a pee.
Then the clatter in his tin mug. Heather’s beautiful warmth is
going, going, gone as reality pours back in all its disastrous glory.
Mind you, it’s a relief to wake up at all. Always good to know
you’ve made it through another night. He opens his eyes just in
time to register the squeak of rubber soles and glimpse a sturdy
silhouette marching off across the church car park. Buddy pokes
his head out from his blanket, ears pricked, sniffing.
There’s four quid in the cup: a lucky birthday present from
someone who doesn’t even know it’s his birthday. Many happy
returns, you useless sod. He mouths it, not quite aloud. Tries
not to talk to himself. Losing battle. Soon he’ll be one of those
shambolic wrecks who mutter and curse under their breaths, the
kind he used to feel sorry for. To be honest, he doesn’t want many
returns of this kind of day.
Buddy heaves a sigh, and his greying muzzle sinks back onto
his paws. He’s old. He just wants to sleep. Neil watches the one-
legged pigeon pecking at a hefty crust of bread. His bladder’s
becoming insistent but he’s putting off the moment when he has
to face the cold and find out the hard way which bit of him
aches the most. His dodgy knee. Maybe his creaking hip. Maybe
his back.
He lowers his feet to the ground just as a pair of fire engines
come bellowing past, sirens dropping and slowing. Doppler
effect. He used to teach kids about that. He even had a video clip
of a passing ambulance he used to play in the classroom, once
upon a time when he was a clean-shaven know-all with a family
and friends and a home and a sofa to sit on at night to watch telly.
His daily routines are different these days: rolling the sleeping
bag and Buddy’s blanket with raw fingers, folding the cardboard
box he uses as a mattress, shoving everything into his trusty back
pack. It’s been on Duke of Edinburgh tramps, this pack. He’s
carried it all over Exmoor with sixth-formers hanging on his every
word. Mr Cunningham, the fount of all knowledge—how are
the mighty fallen! The pack’s decrepit now, straps broken, open-
mouthed tears all along the seams, more hole than it is nylon.
He’s done his best to plug the gaps with plastic bags but the end is
surely nigh for his old friend.
Jeepers, this wind. Might as well be in bloody Siberia. He’s
wearing the warmest clothes he’s ever owned: gloves, anorak and
what’s left of his blue-and-red bobble cap. He never takes it off
in winter. Sleeps in his boots too. It’s safer. He keeps everything
else he owns in three plastic shopping bags. These, along with the
backpack, he stashes under the hedge at the church’s boundary,
getting down on hands and knees to push them out of sight. His
worldly goods blend in. They look like all the other rubbish.
Foxes live under this hedge. It’s one of the few joys of rough
sleeping, watching those wild creatures up close and personal
under the sickly streetlights. He feeds them when he can. Buddy’s
stopped growling at them, and one of the vixens is getting bold.
He’s almost touched her.
He has a pitch selling the Big Issue outside Sainsbury’s but
his slot doesn’t start until the afternoon rush hour. Sometimes
he whiles away a few hours in the bookie, or sneaks into the
library to read newspapers. Often he has to beg if he wants to eat.
Not today. Four pounds in his cup, another three-and-a-bit in his
pocket. Seven quid. Luxury. By rights he ought to put the whole
lot on Westerly Boy in the first race at Haydock. He’s got a very
good feeling about Westerly Boy.
There again, the bookie won’t be open until eight o’clock,
and Neil’s shivering now. His stomach is gnawing itself. Hunger
hurts. Cold hurts. Everything hurts. He’d murder for a cup of
tea and a bit of human company, and Tuckbox do giant mugs for
one pound eighty. They’ve got big radiators, a toilet with fluffy
towels, even a bowl of water outside for dogs. Last week the
barista gave him some leftover pies. Buddy and he and the foxes
shared them.
‘Tuckbox it is, then,’ he says, passing a frayed piece of string
under the dog’s collar. ‘C’mon, Buddy.’
The streetlights are still glowing along Balham High Road,
orange halos in the murk. A rind of ice coats the gutters. Skeins
of hurrying commuters flow around him as though he’s a slow-
moving branch in their river. Some are smoking, some talking
nonsense into phones, their shiny shoes crunching in the grit.
Buddy’s a good scavenger. He finds half a burger by the side of
the road and scoffs the lot without changing pace.
Neil begins to whistle quietly. He’s picturing himself jammed
right up close to one of those heavy old radiators in Tuckbox,
Abi
She felt his kiss as he crept out at six, heard his hopeful whisper—
Let me know, won’t you? Even if it’s not good news?—and
nodded without opening her eyes. She couldn’t bring herself
to tell him. Better to wait for the phone call to make her latest
failure official.
Sleep’s overrated. After all, you’re a long time dead. Charlie
left a mug of coffee for her on the bedside cabinet, and it’s still
hot when she hauls herself into the shower. By seven-fifteen she’s
dressed, blow-dried, has sent off several urgent emails and is
slamming the front door closed behind her. Turn left at the gate,
head for the station, double-quick. So much to do, so little time.
Monday. Results day. That all-important piece of paper will
already be on someone’s desk. For some reason, Charlie’s been
extra optimistic about this round. He keeps rubbing his hands,
muttering, Fifth time lucky, eh? It’s our turn, isn’t it, Abi? Poor
guy. He’s going to be crushed again.
She’s due at St Albans Crown Court this morning to defend a
woman accused of shaking her nine-week-old baby, causing cata-
strophic brain injury. The brief only arrived in Abi’s pigeonhole
on Friday, after her fraud trial was adjourned. She met the mother
an hour later. Kelly Bradshaw: young, gaunt, dissolving. I love
Carla. I know you never ever shake a baby. It all hangs on the
timing of the injury, but there’s a glimmer of hope there, because
the prosecution expert doesn’t seem quite sure.
Abi speeds up, towing her case on its wheels. The next train is
due in twelve minutes and she intends to be on it. She’s mentally
running through the week: lists, decisions, things-to-remember—
organised, compartmentalised and flagged for action. She’s
planning her cross-examination of the prosecution’s neurologist.
She’s conjuring excuses to avoid Christmas lunch at her parents’
place: Dad being Dad in all his dickish glory; her sister Lottie like
the Madonna, beatifically breastfeeding. She’s thinking about
results day.
Heartburn is raging in her solar plexus. Without breaking her
stride she checks her bag, looking for antacids. Bugger, she’s out.
Better get some more.
The judge in Bradshaw has zero empathy. He’s going to be
a total bastard when Abi starts making last-minute applica-
tions—which she fully intends to do because the defence case is
a shambles. She needs social services records, and she plans to
challenge the admissibility of Kelly’s disastrous police interviews.
Abi is going to be public enemy number one this morning.
She’s nipping into Boots when her phone rings. It’s early for
the clinic to be calling, and it’s not from their usual number, but
she feels a lurch of anxiety as she answers.
Not the clinic. It’s Henry, her instructing solicitor in today’s
trial. He’s losing his cool.
‘Slight problem,’ he says. ‘The prosecution served an addendum
report from their neurologist.’
‘And?’
‘It plugs the gap. He puts the time of injury squarely during
the hours when Mum was alone with the baby.’
‘When did they serve this?’
Mutesi
Mrs Dulcie Brown died in the early hours of the morning. She
drifted over the bar from sleep to death, no fuss or fanfare, her
heart finally still after almost a hundred years of life. Three in
the morning is a popular departure time from the Prince Albert
wing: the peaceful hour, when night staff move quietly through
their routines and the cooks haven’t yet begun to clatter.
Her family began to arrive just after the doctor who certified
the death. Mutesi brought them a tray with tea and biscuits. She
found them chuckling over their memories, making up for all
those years when memory was lost. Mrs Brown had been absent
for a decade, wandering through that homesick hinterland where
all faces look alike and nowhere is home, clinging to a stubborn
straw of dignity. Mutesi had pinned photos up in her bedroom as
a reminder of who this shadow really was: Dulcie Agnes Brown.
Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. A Land Girl in the
war, a magistrate. A tiny girl in a white dress and socks, staring
solemnly out at her descendants.
Mutesi’s shift ends at six, though she lingers to write up her
notes before stepping out of the tropical heat of the nursing home
for Mrs Brown. This is her private ritual whenever a resident dies.
After a minute has passed she lights another for all the beloved
souls she lost long ago, back home. Just one small flame must
represent them all: it would take all the tea-lights in the basket if
she were to light one for each. She leaves the candles burning, two
tiny tongues of fire in the darkness.
It’s only as she is stepping out into the dissolving night that
she remembers the donation box. It’s not compulsory, but to light
candles without paying feels like stealing. She has a couple of
two-pound coins ready in her pocket. Ah, well, never mind. She’ll
settle up on Wednesday when she goes in for choir practice.
The one-legged pigeon flutters to land at her feet. He lives on
one of the gargoyles and he knows her very well. Clever bird! She
rummages in her bag for her plastic sandwich box.
‘Yes, yes,’ she murmurs, tipping it upside down. ‘You’re in
luck, Hoppy.’
The pigeon is already pecking as crusts cascade onto the
asphalt. Yawning, Mutesi holds her watch close to her eyes. Five
past seven. She’d dearly like to go home and make tea in the
Grandma mug Emmanuel gave her. She longs to curl up under
heavy blankets with her eyes closed. That is a luxury—drifting
away while the rest of the city suffocates on trains and buses.
But it’s Monday, and she has to meet Brigitte and Emmanuel at
Tuckbox. Mutesi’s job is to give her grandson breakfast before
walking him to school. They will share a cheese toastie and a
pot of tea. He will talk and talk, and she will smile and smile.
Mutesi counts her blessings every day. The blessings keep the
horrors at bay.
She stoops to check the man’s tin mug is empty before sliding
her coins into it. There. Her gift has been delivered straight to
a place where it’s needed, with no middleman. She’s never quite
sure whether this is true of the donation box.
It takes a little over ten minutes to walk along the High Road,
past the GP surgery—cheeky young locum she saw last time tried
‘Mummy lost her phone,’ he says. ‘She rang it but the battery
was flat and now she has to go straight away because she has an
important meeting.’
He has plenty to say about the lost phone, the bad words
Mummy used and how he heroically found it in the bathroom.
Mutesi keeps her listening face on for him, but she and Brigitte
are both distracted by raised voices nearby. A young fellow—wild
hair, wild eyes—is yelling at the café’s owner. Why didn’t you tell
me? I’ve come to get her! What the fuck have you done with her?
Robert is making calm down gestures, pressing downwards with
his big hands as he talks. He seems to find the whole thing quite
amusing. He may be a generation older than the shouting boy,
but he’s a head taller.
There’s a powerful shove to Robert’s shoulder, a final curse—
fucking evil—and words that Mutesi doesn’t catch over the
music and a roaring coffee grinder. The whole thing is over as
suddenly as it began. The young man bangs out through the
street door, briefly colliding with a woman in a dark overcoat
who’s just coming in. The next moment he’s pelting past the
windows.
Café life pauses. There’s a collective moment of nosiness. Then
the milk frother starts up, and the smoothie blender. Someone
laughs. Conversations resume. Robert’s joking with a group of
women in jogging clothes, tapping the side of his head. They’re
chortling. The woman who was almost knocked over is waiting
at the counter, talking on her phone.
‘That man used his outside voice,’ says Emmanuel, pouting in
disapproval. ‘And bad words. Uh-uh. Naughty.’
Mutesi tugs gently on his ear. ‘Maybe he didn’t like his coffee.’
‘Or he didn’t take his pills this morning,’ says Brigitte. ‘I must
go. Emmanuel, you’ll read to Grandma, ask her to sign your
reading diary?’
Emmanuel’s hand is back in the air.
‘I forgot my book. I think it’s in my bed.’